


is this the part where you let go

by apricae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Murder-Suicide, Self-Sacrifice, Suicide, this one's dark sorry kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:28:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24127405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricae/pseuds/apricae
Summary: Obi-Wan nodded, but he still couldn't meet the gaze of the ancient Master. "I'll take Palpatine.""Strong enough to face Lord Sidious, you will never be. Die you will, and painfully.”"I'm counting on it, Master."
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Yoda
Comments: 20
Kudos: 199





	is this the part where you let go

“I will not kill Anakin.”

Obi-Wan’s certainty is hard as steel, his plea desperate. The tears on his cheeks have yet to dry, and Yoda knows, suddenly, that he is telling the truth. 

“He’s-“ a gentle, hitching breath, “He is like my brother. I can not do it. Please, Master.”

Grandmaster Yoda bows his head, and takes the sacrifice as it is offered - unhappily, but earnestly. Obi-Wan has suffered enough. Yoda aches, but he meets those painfully bright blue eyes and nods.

“Go, Obi-Wan. The Force is with you.”

“Thank you, Master. May the Force be with you.”

He’s strikingly young, Yoda muses, watching him stand and leave. Not yet forty. His auburn hair only barely starting to grey. The galaxy upon his narrow shoulders. 

He has carried that weight gracefully since childhood. 

—

The Dark is hungry, and powerful, and knowing, but it is also selfish. It will do anything to preserve itself, to stay alive. The Dark will go on, always. The Dark will do _anything_ to stay alive. 

That is its downfall. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi is as made of clear glass, a lantern where he enters the Chancellor’s private office. His pain is not of the Dark. His pain is cracks that allow more light in. More, and more, and now he has shattered, and he is saturated with it, so full that he, to the Shadow’s eyes, is blinding. Quiet and bright and _destroyed already_ ; there is nothing here for the Dark to take hold of and ruin. 

“Chancellor Palpatine,” the sun itself speaks, in a pleasantly polite Coruscanti accent. “Surrender yourself.”

“No,” says the Shadow. 

Scarlet fire emerges at its hip; danger shines in tainted Sith eyes. Darth Sidious strikes fear in all living beings. 

The man before him was dead before he walked through the door. He died a while ago, somewhere on his way from the Jedi Temple when he realised what he was going to do. He died with a wry half-smile on his face; it remains now as he faces the Dark. His lightsaber is in his hand, unignited. 

Sidious snarls, and strikes. Lightning for his bones; make him suffer, make him cling pitifully to life, make him beg. Make him bleed. Fool, who thought he could triumph over the Dark!

This is the Shadow’s mistake. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi does not want life.

Darth Sidious has precious little time to ponder this; the Force around him pulls, and still hissing lightning and torture he is beckoned closer, closer, until the Dark is pressed up against the Light, like dance partners, like an intimate embrace. It is not an embrace.

It is a trap.

Strong arms lock with cramping electrified muscles around the Shadow’s shoulders, and then- A stabbing pressure against the Sith Lord’s spine, sudden and harsh and- No, it can't be- That’s not right- _But that’d kill him too_ -

The lightsaber ignites and a blade the colour of a summer sky pierces them both. 

As the flashing lightning stops, Chancellor Palpatine sags out of that cramped hold and drops to the floor. Through his middle is a scorching lightsaber burn; no art of the Dark could salvage him now. He is dead before he hits the ground. 

Obi-Wan exhales softly and takes a few staggering steps away. Away from the body. Towards the window, the grand viewscreen shattered by another, fiercer duel. The air is fresher there, less seeped in darkness. He doesn’t get far as his legs give way, but he drags himself a little closer anyway, until he can see the sunlight. The warm, distant sunlight. He coughs harshly, curled up on his side by the broken glass. This is it. 

Sunset on Coruscant has always been beautiful. 

He feels blood; it trickles into his beard from his half-open mouth as his breath rattles deep in his chest. He doesn’t bother to wipe it away, doesn’t think he could, anyway. The light is drifting as if obscured by hazy veils, he’s crying, weeping silently as his heart tries and fails to compensate for his ruined insides. 

_Anakin. I’m sorry, Anakin._

Anakin is gone. Anakin is everything Obi-Wan has just killed. He sobs, soft and muffled, as his body convulses in on itself, forcing more blood from him, dripping to the neatly carpeted floor. He chokes and lies still. A peaceful sleepiness plays counterpoint to the burning pain. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

 _I’m so sorry, Anakin_.

_I’m going now._

The sun vanishes below the skyline, and Obi-Wan closes his eyes.

_—_

When the clones find him, it is all over. It’s ended. They don’t touch him; he’s a Jedi. He’s a hero. 

Anakin Skywalker does not think of him as either when master Yoda takes him to the Chancellor’s office; no longer Sith, no longer Jedi, only a man, broken. His world shattered by the fiery shores when he felt the threads of his bond snap apart. 

Is it pity or punishment to show him this?

“Obi-Wan,” he whispers, then louder, “Obi-Wan!”

That is all he says. All he can say. There are no words, nothing at all, to quantify his pain when he sees the lightsaber in his hand and the wound in his chest. The ruin of a man starts forward, falls to his knees before the body of a man who loved him. No one stops him, and he wishes they would, wishes they would take him away so he couldn’t see it. The tired lines of a slack face. Blood in his beard. The scorched hole in tan tunics. This was not noble, or kind. It was the desperate last effort of a man who did not want to live, who would take the Dark down with him, who gave in at last when all had been torn from him. 

Anakin Skywalker screams until his voice reflects the breakage inside him. 

Dawn comes to Coruscant.


End file.
